California on the Hill
The annual Humanities on the Hill (HOH) sponsored by the Federation of State Humanities Councils (FSHC) this year was fulfillingly familiar while still providing new opportunities to reflect on the impact of the humanities across the country.
For California Humanities, the HOH trip consisted of two and half days of meeting with our state’s Congressional leaders to both advocate for the importance of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and share how our grantees and programs make an impact across the state. This year, our teams completed 45 meetings with Congressional offices in both the House and Senate. California Humanities Board Chair Bennett Peji, Vice President at the Jacobs Center for Neighborhood Innovation in San Diego, made his first HOH trip, and was paired with Julie Fry, our President & CEO. Bennett spoke passionately in each meeting about the importance of amplifying diverse voices across California.
“We were greeted in every Congressional office with tremendous respect, and the team delivered a strong message about the critical importance of supporting the humanities always and especially in these critical times,” Bennett stated. “Even though the humanities may not directly solve all of the issues that the legislators are dealing with on a daily basis, it is the humanities that makes those issues worth solving. And the arts and humanities projects that each generation chooses to leave behind tells future generations who we were and what we stood for.”
Our second team consisted of California Humanities board member Oliver Rosales, Professor of History at Bakersfield College, who was on this third HOH trip, and John Nguyen-Yap, our Outreach and Advocacy Manager. Oliver spoke as a passionate storyteller and advocate for the Central Valley who is also a former grantee of both the NEH and California Humanities. Every office we met with heard his personal account of seeing how NEH funding is a catalyst for community building and the economy. On average, every dollar of NEH funding generates at least four dollars in additional local investment.
According to Oliver, “Meeting with various Congressional members and their staff offers great insight into what’s happening across our diverse state. I leave Capitol Hill with great energy, passion, and direction toward how I can leverage my own humanities networks to further expand our collective impact into the diverse corners of our state and ensure that every Californian has the opportunity to engage with quality public humanities programming.”